Goodbye to Pablo Calvo, the journalist who wrote with his soul

Hector Gambini

05/07/2021 3:59 AM

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 05/07/2021 4:09 AM

Sometimes each key is

a tear

.

This Thursday, May 6, half an hour before midnight, journalist Pablo Calvo died.

His body waged a fierce battle against the coronavirus for 26 days.

He left on

his 53rd birthday

and more or less on the date he and his son León had dreamed of reuniting:

“You are the best thing that happened to me in life.

In two weeks we are kicking, ”

he told her when a phone was handed to him on the way to intensive care.

Still no one imagined the devastation and madness of the following days.

Pablo worked in the magazine Viva de Clarín, after going through the

Politics

sections

and

the

newspaper's

research team

, where he had just entered the nineties.

He came from the DyN agency, where his dream of being a journalist - the implacable destiny for which he was born - began to take shape dressed as a loon.

He was still doing military service when, at the age of 18, he

was going to cover plays in his soldier's uniform

to deliver the chronicle at the agency and run to the regiment without wasting time to change.

Pablo Calvo and his son León, who inherited a love for San Lorenzo and writing.

It was June 2013.

Those minutes gained to the dressing room would be valuable to improve the beginning of the note, to better exploit the lost data, to conceive a dream auction.

Pablo began to experience the

symphonic texts that he would illuminate with the naturalness of a keyboard violinist

during the next 35 years of his career.

He loved to say that when asked how much he wanted to charge for his first job, he

asked for a latte

.

If journalists borrow from extraordinary lives and characters, Pablo was a compendium of those experiences: he received the diploma of

finalist for the Foundation Award for a New Ibero

-

American Journalism

from Gabriel García Márquez;

He wrote to the Pope and received an answer at home, in the handwriting of Francis, whom he would interview shortly after in Rome;

and he was a son to the great Hermenegildo Sábat, who, as he sat near him

in the Clarín Newsroom, drew him from the front and in profile

every time the teacher tried new crayons.

Pablo Calvo, drawn by Hermenegildo Sábat.

With Sábat he fulfilled one of the many rites that Pablo, a man of strict rituals, adored: having coffee at the Redacción bar, always at the same time, and leaving the newspaper to eat pizza at La Boca, after closing.

When the holy day came, he and Menchi waited for whatever it took until the other was finished.

As

his major rite was San Lorenzo

, the chemistry with the newspaper's crows flowed like the attack of Los Matadores, that undefeated champion of '68 who was turning the Olympics just when Pablo was

born in Sarandí

.

He was the eldest son of that Barça family from Avellaneda and he wore his colors with pride even when he obtained scholarships in Racing for his outstanding grades in school.

There are his father and brother, who began to read it since he made “Alas de papel”, the newspaper of his school in Villa Domínico.

Pablo Calvo with Francisco, in Rome, united by Barça's passion.

It was in 2014.

Another pride of Pablo: he was the first in his working family to obtain a university degree, when he obtained a

Bachelor's Degree in Social Communication from the first batch of graduates of that career at the UBA

created after the democratic recovery of 83.

Pablo was a goldsmith of

careful writing, of the exact data, of the correct information

, but he was able to ask his boss to allow him to return to the scene of a note to register smells, tastes, sounds that had been lost.

If he had to tell a bar story, he would work as a waiter one night.

Journalism and skin.

Text and entrails.

To read any text by Pablo Calvo is to find

passion for what counts

.

Whatever it is.

He won several awards from ADEPA and FOPEA

, but the work for which García Márquez himself distinguished him had put his body, literally.

In 2017 he received a FOPEA Award for his chronicle "Face to face with the FARC in the last days of a war that lasted 53 years".

After interviewing a man who had lost his daughter in the Cro-Magnon tragedy, he

took a literacy course to teach his interviewee to read and write

, something the man told him he had pending.

His "note" did not end until the man fulfilled his dream and wrote, at last, the "love letter to his princess."

If a part of the journalist's dream is to change lives, Pablo was an inveterate dreamer.

He joined the team of Sports envoys of the newspaper to cover the last World Cup in Russia and when he returned he signed up with his son as a volunteer to go to paint the popular New Gasometer.

He cultivated solidarity work

and adored the art of the Boedo Artistic Group that paints murals of Barça cult in the corners of the neighborhood of eternal glory.

In 1997 he married the journalist Diana Baccaro -also our companion in

Clarín-

and four years later

León was born

, the son who inherited his love for San Lorenzo and for the symphonic texts that he learns to weave these days in the Arts career of the Writing of the UNA.

León was precisely the claw of his name all these days, standing next to his mother before the raging storm of fate.

Ever since she was allowed into intensive care, she

went to talk to her dad every day

.

Of life together.

From San Lorenzo, who had beaten River.

From the archer Torrico, that shy and discreet hero that Pablo adored and who once again had saved the glory and the heart.

Leon said that when he spoke to her, the icy gauges on the monitor warmed up.

That they showed reactions.

"He listens to you

,

"

promised the doctor who accompanied him.

In those short trips to hell with gray cables, white lights and infinite anguish, he also played "Colombina", the song by Jaime Roos.

The Uruguayan sang in Pablo's ear: "Don't let the yellow bulbs go out ...".

Pablo Calvo

wrote four books

: The death of Favaloro;

The beggars and the tyrant (about an ambush of vagabonds from Tucumán during the de facto government of Domingo Bussi);

God is Raven and The Treasures of the Gasometer.

The last two are a must-read for those looking for pearls in the rich history of San Lorenzo.

And he was a

teacher in the Clarín-San Andrés Journalism Master

.

The covers of the two books he wrote about his beloved Saint Lawrence.

He was also part of the team that produced the multimedia infographic on the trial of the military junta, a work that

won the King of Spain Award in 2012

.

Now he was divorced, working on a new book about Sábat, and brainstorming ideas for a story on Florida Street.

He never knew where or when the virus caught him.

First it was a fever, a swab, a consultation.

On Saturday April 10 he tested positive.

Then she began to be short of breath, and just four days later, the intermediate therapy became intensive.

There he told León that in two weeks they would be kicking.

Right away it was the concern of his iron family, of his son stoically enduring everything that someone can endure at age 20, and more;

of her friends bringing as much force as possible in the WhatsApp groups where Diana spent the daily parts.

From his colleagues and friends from all newsrooms and beyond.

And when you ask again, that's it.

How is it already?

Already what?

Sometimes the keys cry.

There are never words for these endings.

Not for this one either.

So he wrote

Some of the most outstanding notes that he published in Viva y Clarín:

• Clarín Special.

  Travel to the intimacy of the city where everything happens for the ball

• The Pope sent me a letter to talk about football

• The best kept secrets of Route 2

• Menchi's strokes of affection for his companions

• The last 100 steps of Che Guevara as a free man

• Face to face with the FARC in the final days of a 53-year war

• Intimate worlds.

  They were my idols in football, but one day I felt them my friends

• A waiter intruder in Guerrín, a pizzeria full of Corrientes Avenue